Susan L. Carruthers

Author and Historian

 

making do

coming Soon

Imagine a world in which clothing wasn't superabundant – cheap, disposable, indestructible – but perishable, threadbare and chronically scarce. Eighty years ago, when World War II ended, a textile famine loomed. What would everyone wear as uniforms were discarded and soldiers returned home, Nazi camps were liberated, and millions of uprooted people struggled to subsist? In this richly textured history, Carruthers unpicks a familiar wartime motto, 'Make Do and Mend', to reveal how central fabric was to postwar Britain. Clothes and footwear supplied a currency with which some were rewarded, while others went without. Making Do moves from Britain's demob centres to liberated Belsen – from razed German cities to refugee camps and troopships – to uncover intimate ties between Britons and others bound together in new patterns of mutual need. Filled with original research and personal stories, Making Do illuminates how lives were refashioned after the most devastating war in human history.

Published by Cambridge University Press

News and Reviews on Susan’s Previous Work

Read the new Dear John Review in Publishers’ Weekly

Dear John Reviewed in Wall St. Journal

Dear John Review in London Review of Books

Susan Carruthers on Dan Snow’s History Hit Podcast for Dear John

Time.Com publishes Dear John excerpt

Dear John on History News Network

Susan Carruthers discusses her research at the Library of Congress

Susan Carruthers in Researcher Spotlight at Library of Congress

Reviews For Making do

This is a necessary inoculation for anyone prone to nostalgia. Making Do is proof that clothing is always a reflection of the human condition- especially, when those conditions are dire. Carruthers deftly brings the historic significance of wartime down to the human level, with entertaining interludes and well-researched stories that will make you question your own relationship to your garments.

Avery Trufelman, host and producer of Articles of Interest

From Land Girl breeches to demob suits, austerity chic to Dior’s New Look, Making Do follows the fascinating story of bodies in motion, through air raids, rationing, and recycling, as a nation sought to dress the part for war and peace.

Alan Allport, author of Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1938-1941

Garments are our social skin. This engaging, intimate history of the social and political life of clothing and footwear reveals human vulnerability, resilience, and adaptability in a way that changes the way we think of the postwar world.

Joanna Bourke, author of What It Means To Be Human

Meet the author

Susan Carruthers is a professor in US/International History at the University of Warwick, where she has taught since 2017. Her work focuses on representations of war and the ways in which individuals, and societies more broadly, make sense of conflict and its aftermath. She is the author of several books, including The Good OccupationThe Media at War, Cold War Captives and Winning Hearts and Minds. Her expertise in the media and war, cold war culture, and colonial counterinsurgency spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.